


She can't remember which came first

by towardsmorning



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Gen, Identity Issues, Timey-Wimey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-08
Updated: 2011-09-08
Packaged: 2017-10-23 12:51:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/250495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/towardsmorning/pseuds/towardsmorning
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"Once upon a time, Amy Pond was not the marrying kind."</i>
</p><p>Amy Pond has lived a lot of different lives, and all of them are reluctant to leave her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	She can't remember which came first

**Author's Note:**

> I have been wanting to write this for so long. Needless to say, Amy has gotten... complicated.
> 
> Title and quotes from I Am Disappeared by Frank Turner.

_And on the worst days_   
_When it feels like life weighs ten thousand tonnes  
She's got her cowboy boots and car keys on the bed stand  
So she can always run_

*

Whenever anybody asks, admittedly something which doesn't happen often, Amy insists that she doesn't recall her dreams. There have been much larger lies told in the course of her life and it isn't something which brings her a great deal of guilt.

And anyway, she tells herself, it's more like _half_ a lie. She doesn't remember her dreams _properly_ ; they're hazy at best, and they feel a little like the ones she had when sick as a child, tinged with fever and never quite within grasping distance. The trouble, Amy finds, is that her lie is illogical ( _why_ lie?)- and _this_ is why it feels so terrible to tell.

Of course, sometimes the Doctor looks at her _like that_ when she stumbles into the console room after a night's dreaming. Looks at her with what looks to be consideration but Amy knows is closer to a type of benign suspicion, or knowing, or both- but the moment always passes, as moments tend to, especially moments that Amy never dares allow to do anything else.

*

Once upon a time, Amy Pond was not the marrying kind.

This was very irrationally upsetting to most of Leadworth, who insisted that she ought to at least give someone a go. (It took a lot of self control for Amy to not remark that in a way, she had, because somehow she doubted they would appreciate that piece of wit.)

It was difficult to explain, but the best Amy had come up with was that she was always thinking about how she wanted to _leave,_ so if she were to marry, she'd just end up leaving them behind. Which became harder to use as an explanation when everyone simply started asking why she and her hypothetical husband couldn't simply leave _together_ , because as much as it felt like betrayal Amy had begun to learn how to keep things like _because I doubt they'll want all that danger_ close to her chest.

When Amy wakes up she knows that this is wrong, that some things follow you wherever you go and will even make you breakfast in the morning to boot, but it never quite changes the fact that sometimes Amy doesn't understand herself all that well.

*

Later, Amy asks the Doctor what happened with their visit to see Vincent after Rory was back; he responds with a ten minute lecture on linearity and how, to put it bluntly, it's a load of bollocks. (In much more scientific terms, of course, and with hand-waving.)

Amy nods, and thinks about how for the Doctor this means he really hasn't responded at all. She pointedly does not bring it up again. But in a spare moment, she checks the print of Sunflowers hung in their room. Just to make sure that _For Amy_ is still there.

*

Once upon a time, Amelia Pond moved from Scotland to Leadworth and it was completely terrible.

She hated it. Her Aunt tried to be patient, at first, but when it became clear that Amelia didn't particularly want to give her any approval of the village in return for that patience, the well quickly ran dry. It ended up running like this: Amelia would avoid her Aunt, and her Aunt would extend the same generosity to her unless it was to Try And Fix Her Up A Bit, What Must Your Teachers Think Of You- and so it went.

Sometimes, Amelia would sneak out late at night and stare up at the sky, so deep and bottomless, the moon smashing through the darkness and doing nothing to hide how bare it all was. These nights would usually make her wonder just why it felt so _wrong,_ but she couldn't stop herself doing it again and again. Deep down there was a little spark that felt like _I'm waiting for someone,_ but that was silly, because there was nowhere up there for anybody to _come from_.

Amy wakes up from this dream in a cold sweat every time, and has to reach out to press a flat palm to the walls to reassure herself that yes, she had found her way home. Even if it had taken a universe to do it.

*

"Do you ever dream about..."

"What?" she asks Rory, heart pounding.

"Leadworth. Not our Leadworth, I mean, obviously. But the one that the Dream Lord sort of... made."

"No," she responds. _Not yet,_ she thinks. "Do you?"

"...No," and he's such a bad liar, but she presses her lips to his cheek and smiles.

"What we have here is better," she says, "why would I dream about that?"

Rory looks unconvinced, but Amy thinks that anything she says will just make it worse and so leaves it at that.

*

Amy misses her parents. Homesickness is natural. It's not, _shouldn't be_ a problem.

And everyone who has parents to lose has nightmares about their deaths, she tells herself. It's probably the most normal thing about her.

(They never die for any _reason,_ but _dreams aren't reasonable_ is her mantra as she wipes away the tear tracks and goes to put her face on.)

*

It surprises her, months later, asleep in what Rory calls 'their own bed, at last' as though the TARDIS had been some kind of extended honeymoon, when the dreams don't stop. Later, she'll realise that deep down there had been a suspicion that the TARDIS had been projecting or something, something which then immediately reveals itself as completely absurd.

Then again, her whole life had been absurd. One more thing wouldn't have gone amiss.

Amy goes to bed one night and has a dream even hazier than normal, broken up into tiny parts that don't quite fit together, and wakes up with the distinct feeling, low in her gut, that she is less lonely today than she was yesterday. After a moment she rolls over and stares at her bedstand, and through squinted, not-quite-awake eyes regards the picture of her, Rory and Mels at a Christmas party two years ago. Well, a little more from her perspective, but who's counting?

Rory wakes to find her still staring at it an hour later, and Amy pulls herself away as he starts to shuffle out of bed. These things happen, and she's found that there's little you can do to stop them. They all change somewhere down the line anyway; no need to get comfortable.

*

Amy never knows where she stands. This goes double for matters regarding herself.

Her life keeps getting taken out of her hands, shifted, then handed back with no new instructions to go along with it.

Her life changes enough that she never tires of it.

Nobody seems to understand that she _cares_ and _knows_.

But then, nobody had ever understood much when it came to her. Amy is used to it; that's why she's Amy and not Amelia nowadays.

*

There are only two constants in her life: her boys. The Doctor, who always comes back, and Rory, who always follows her forward.

The Doctor wears that knowing look again the first time she comes back into the console room after... _everything,_ after god knows how long running and hiding and watching people die and being lied to. She shoots him a dark look in response. Not that it has any effect.

"Don't know what you're so smug about," Amy says, suddenly uncharitable. "It's not like _you_ know what happens any more than the rest of us. You just talk faster when the topic comes up."

The Doctor doesn't disagree.

This knowledge, that he knows as little about what he has shaped her into as she does is worrying. The knowledge that once she might _not_ have worried, a thought that buzzes at the back of her skull like a phantom pain, only makes it worse.

Amy stays quiet on the topic after that.

*

_Amy worked in a bar in Exeter  
I went back to her house and I slept beside her  
She woke up screaming in the middle of the night  
Terrified of her own insides  
Dreams of pirate ships and Patty Hearst  
Breaking through a life over rehearsed  
She can't remember which came first  
The house the home or the terrible thirst  
She keeps having dreams_

**Author's Note:**

> I was going to discuss a little of this fic here, but you know what? I think I'll just say 'I love Amy, I hate Amy's passive role in series six, and I hate that Moff has stopped telling her story and let it get tangled up with no resolution."
> 
> Seriously, this girl has HOW many timelines? Jeez.
> 
> Anyway, I kind of feel like this ought to be longer, but it just wouldn't come. Maybe I'll extend it someday, maybe not.


End file.
